We are in early talks with several news publishers about how we might better support subscription business models on Facebook. As part of the Facebook Journalism Project, we are taking the time to work closely together with our partners and understand their needs.

For now it is still only a project, but it fits perfectly into Facebook’s strategy: there is no longer enough ad space in the News Feed, and the company needs to find new ad revenue streams. Facebook could start working with a few select publishers to introduce a paywall system limiting one’s ability to view more than 10 articles per month, before having to pay for a subscription – or log in using an active one.

For consistency across the platform, the number of 10 articles or news stories would be fixed for all publishers, despite them having different established rules on their websites.

Publishers would have full control over which stories would fall behind the paywall. They would also keep full control of subscriber data, with – potentially -access to more informative Facebook data, to understand what stories trigger more engagements on the platform.

This project is still very much in its infancy, and many aspects could change before it goes live. However, this is a definite “must-watch” story as it could greatly impact the way we use Facebook in the future.

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Geoff is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of We are Social Media. He also leads the Social Media team at Zimmerman, an Omnicom agency based out of South Florida, USA. Geoff is also a visiting lecturer at Universities across Europe and the US, and an international #smm speaker.